District to add assistant principals

Three Central Valley School District middle schools will return to having an assistant principal in the building all day in 2006.

District staff decided in July not to fill two full-time assistant principal positions at four of the district’s five middle schools because of an increase in principals’ pay. Instead, two vice principals were sharing the responsibility at four schools.

On Monday, the school board agreed to put an assistant principal at every building. The positions will be filled with current Central Valley staff.

“It’s a matter of having the manpower or the ability to meet the needs of the kids,” said John Parker, the assistant principal at Evergreen Middle School.

Traditionally, the vice principals handle most discipline problems, and they often act as go-betweens for parents and the schools.

Parker, who was assigned in July to oversee both Evergreen and North Pines Middle School, returned to his full-time status at Evergreen shortly after the start of the school year in September because of a spike in enrollment.

Evergreen became the overflow school for Greenacres Middle School and now has nearly 600 students.

“I was having parents from Evergreen call over to Pines, and Pines parents calling over to Evergreen, and I wouldn’t even be in the building,” Parker said.

“The thing I think is most important is that I want to know my kids; I want to be there to help my kids,” Parker said. “It’s a challenge enough to help 500 to 600 kids; when you share between the buildings and you have 1,000 kids, it’s even more difficult.”

With the exception of Parker, the posts at the other three middle schools still sharing assistant principals will be filled with positions considered half-time assistant principals and half-time districtwide staff development coordinators. That will allow part of the salaries to be paid with curriculum development funds, Superintendent Mike Pearson said.

“We needed to build our staff development team, and this keeps that assistant principal in the building,” Pearson said.

Sandra Allen, who was assistant principal at both Bowdish and Horizon, will become the half-time assistant principal at Bowdish as well as the K-12 districtwide staff development coordinator for reading.

Shelly Bajadali, a counselor at North Pines, will become the assistant principal and staff development coordinator for K-12 assessment.

Cindy Sothen, a literacy facilitator for the district, will move into the assistant principal post at Horizon, as well as take on the duties of the staff development coordinator for K-8 math.

The new staff assignments will address the three academic areas that Pearson said principals have repeatedly identified as needing focus. The staff development coordinators will be able to help address those issues.

“We already know what we want kids to know and be able to do,” Pearson said. He said the challenge is using the right assessment tools to determine if students are reaching those benchmarks.

“So this is a win-win for everybody,” Pearson said